Monday, 30 September 2013

Earlier I looked at what Islam says about women in the Classic Manual of Islamic Jurisprudence (Umdat al-Salik).
But I keep hearing in the media that Islam is not misogynist, that Muhammad and his Koran marked a liberation for women.
So I thought I'd do a statistical take, looking just at the Koran this time. (*)
My own analysis was to do a search of "women" in Koran online translations. I chose the translation by orthodox Muslim Yusuf Ali.
The result are in PDF and Excel.
I classified the verses with the word "women" in them into three categories: P = Positive, N = Negative and O = Neutral
Of course there's my bias in making the decisions on which category each verse should be placed. I've tried to avoid my bias by being rather generous to the "Positives" and only classifying a verse as "Negative" when it's abundantly clear that the verse is a definite negative for women in Islam.

The results are:

Verses

%

POSITIVE

7

13%

NEGATIVE

29

56%

NEUTRAL

16

31%

TOTAL

(**)

52

100%

It seems hardly necessary to point out the obvious: that those who claim the Koran offered or offers liberation for women are not supported by the evidence.The main negatives are:

Women must be veiled (24.31, 33.59). People often claim that veils are not mandated in the Koran. 24.31 is pretty clear: And say to the believing women that they should lower their gaze and guard their modesty; that they should not display their beauty and ornaments...; that they should draw their veils over their bosoms and not display their beauty except to their husbands, their fathers, their husband's fathers, their sons, their husbands' sons, their brothers or their brothers' sons, or their sisters' sons, or their women... And 33.59: O Prophet! Tell your wives and your daughters and the women of the believers to draw their cloaks (veils) all over their bodies (i.e.screen themselves completely except the eyes or one eye to see the way). That will be better, that they should be known (as free respectable women) so as not to be annoyed.[Hilali-Khan translation]

Female slaves, or captives may be freely used sexually (33.5). [Note that some Muslims consider infidel (kuffar) women to be in the same category as slaves or captives]

Muslim women cannot marry non-Muslims (60.1)

***********************

(*) There's another article on Women in the Koran here. And my post "Sharia: what does it say about women".(**) There are more verses in the Koran that have "women" in them, but many are duplicates, which I've not counted.

THE map of the modern Middle East, a political and economic pivot in the international order, is in tatters. Syria’s ruinous war is the turning point. But the centrifugal forces of rival beliefs, tribes and ethnicities — empowered by unintended consequences of the Arab Spring — are also pulling apart a region defined by European colonial powers a century ago and defended by Arab autocrats ever since.

A different map would be a strategic game changer for just about everybody, potentially reconfiguring alliances, security challenges, trade and energy flows for much of the world, too.

Interesting article, by Robin Wright of the Institute of Peace at the Wilson Centre.

Sunday, 29 September 2013

The grand wave of Jihadism across the world -- Afghanistan, Pakistan, Philippines, Kenya, Mali, you name it -- is existential, not grievance based.
By that I mean this: that it's not a reaction to various Muslim grievances, from Palestine to Kashmir. It's part of the Islamic push to install Islam throughout the world. It is existential: that is, relating to the existence of Islam, which requires, in authoritative doctrine, that it be the only religion in the world.
That's not to say that grievances play no part. Of course they do.
But they're not the main reason we see the chaos of Islamic murder across the world. And if the west were to sort out every grievance in the world, there would still be Islamic aggression. If we were to sort out a Palestinian state, pull out all infidel troops from the Middle East to Afghanistan, if India were to give Kashmir to the Muslims, if the Philippines were to give the Moro rebels their Islamic state and Thailand give its south to the Muslim rebels, if all those things were to happen, there would still be Islamic attacks on the west. The existence of Islam requires it.
It's not me that says this. It's the Islamic Trinity. And it's Islamic clerics.
Take this case, for example, reported in the Ahmadiyya Times. Abdul Samad, a Pakistan cleric, makes it crystal clear:

xi) Our enmity towards Hindus is not due to the Kashmir issue; our enmity towards America is not due to Iraq and Afghanistan; the enmity between us and the Jews is not due to the Palestine; the real cause is that they do not accept our system and Islam.xii) Our enmity towards them (the non-believers) will continue even if they renounce all their crimes.xiii) Enmity towards infidels is a must. It is part of our faith. Islam says the Muslims should stay away from the infidels and their countries.xiv) The best way to get rid of them (infidels) is to continue jihad until the Allah's faith (Islam) is completely enforced all over the world.

If you want the other side, that it's all due to grievances Muslims have with the west, then you can go to the Voice of Russia's "3-way debate: Jihadists who came from the West - what do they want?". This is long-ish and maybe for hard-core Jihad watchers only; I listened to it all, and found Asghar Bukhari's arguments wanting. One of the three, Robert Spencer, has his comments here.
Quote:

Bukhari was given immense space to make the same point over and over again: that Muslim violence was all the fault of non-Muslims, particularly Israelis, who were murdering Muslims wholesale until the oppressed people finally reacted with violence.

Saturday, 28 September 2013

"He's back!", screams the headline in The Telegraph.
"We've heard very little from Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI since his retirement..." says Tim Stanley, the columnist here.
If only it had remained so. If only we'd continued to hear little from Benedict (aka Ratzinger)
In his ill-thought out urge to take down science, Ratzinger quotes from Richard Dawkins' book "The Selfish Gene".
He has the gall to call it "science fiction":

"I quote", he says, "'The emergence of tetrapod vertebrates... draws its orgin from the fact that a primitive fish' chose 'to go and explore the land, on which, however, was unable to move except jumping clumsily and thus creating, as a result of a modification of behaviour, the selective pressure due to which would have developed sturdy limbs of tetrapods. Among the descendants of this bold explorer, Magellan of this evolution, some can run at a speed of over 70 miles per hour'...".

This, says the ex pontiff, is "... certainly... science fiction".

Whaaat?? Yet Tim Stanley, in an equally ill-thought out comment, excuses this nonsense on the grounds that it "... isn't an attack on the hard facts of evolution but rather a gentle reminder that its translation into a speculative theory -- that a fish might choose to go for a jog -- demands some involvement of the imagination".
Well, perhaps so. But if it didn't happen exactly as Dawkins imagines, it would have been something very similar and there is plenty of other evidence of evolution to make that small leap in imagination very likely.
For the basic fact of fish to tetrapod evolution is well understood and undisputed. We are all, all we vertabrates, descended from fish which made a leap -- metaphorical or literal -- from the sea to land.
Ratzinger was the one who was in charge of discipline in the church before he got the top job. And in that role did nothing to uncover the growing scandal of child abuse by Catholic clergy. And when Pope, only did something when he was forced too -- and too little too late. Even now, he's prevaricating.
Let's hope Ratzinger is the first living example of evolution going backwards: from hands to fins. Maybe then he'll no longer be able to burden us with such tripe.

Friday, 27 September 2013

Below are some links and arguments, as background to a school debate at a UK public school -- as in the title above -- sent to "J", who is taking the positive side of the Proposition in the debate. [LATER: the debate was won by the side supporting the proposition: that the burka should be banned...]Hi J, a few quick thoughts about the issue. Good luck with it. I'm expect you'll have the Hall on your side.

BTW, I use the word "burka" (also can be spelled "burqa" -- neither is more correct than the other) to cover both "burka" and "niqab": see picture below. Sometimes I use the word "veiling" on the understanding that I mean burka/niqab and not something like the hijab.

That's what's not to like about the Burka. But why ban it? Why not let women make up their own minds, make free choices? After all, we may not like tongue stud rings, but we don't ban them.

So.... reasons to ban the burka:

Security: we don't allow people into banks -- or through immigration -- with helmets or masks. Why allow burkas? (Google "Burka Bandits" to see the number of crimes committed by burka-wearers)

Reduce coercion: Banning is good for all those Muslim women who would otherwise be coerced into wearing the burka by their peers or menfolk. There are quite a few stories of Muslim women escaping countries where the burka is mandatory and then finding to their dismay when they come to the UK that it's worn here, and increasingly so... they haven't escaped the coercion.

Sends a message: we don't want the gradual imposition of laws such as sharia, towards which burkas are a small step

Has bad health effects: See Google results for "Burqa Vitamin-D deficiency". "Low levels of Vitamin D have also been linked to a whole host of devastating disorders including cardiovascular diseases, type 1 diabetes, multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis. There is also a strong association between deficiency in Vitamin D and an increased risk of developing several deadly cancers, including breast cancer." [Ref]. See also June 2013 Times of India report, for statistics.

Note: the Burka is already banned in quite a few countries including Muslim majority countries -- Tunisia, Syria and Turkey -- for reasons mostly relating to their being indications of fundamentalism. This is not in itself an argument for banning, but shows that in other countries, including Muslim ones, they have found solid reasons for so doing.

And, btw, it would be popular. A recent Sun poll shows that 87% favour partial bans (in schools, banks, public buildings, etc), while 61% favour outright ban. That's virtual unanimity in favour of at least a partial ban. (One might object that the Sun is just polling angry old white men. But its demographics of its more than 7 million readers are "...approximately 34% of those fall into the ABC1 demographic and 64% in the C2DE demographic. The average age of a Sun reader is 45 and approximately 45% of readers are women.[3]"

Counter arguments and counter-counter arguments:

The counter arguments mostly revolve around freedom of religion and freedom of choice.

Freedom of religion argument is bogus: we put limits on those freedoms all the time: eg, don't allow Mormon polygamy. We don't allow Hiindu suttee. Freedom of religion has to be carried out in a milieu. It's clear from the vast amount being written about burkas recently that the UK milieu is simply fed up with it; and rightly so.

Freedom of choice argument also bogus: this is not a fashion choice. Any woman, Muslim or not, who wears the burka attests to its extreme discomfort -- cannot even be heard when she speaks. No more a "fashion choice" than were the bound feet of Chinese women up to the 20th century -- they were banned in 1949. (your great grandmother, Jing's grandmother, had bound feet)

In Your Face. Hitchens on the Burka (10 May '10): suppression of it means lifting a ban on women's rights; lifting a ban on women's rights to disagree with men and clerical authorities; lifting a ban on the right of citizens to look one another in the face.

The Veil vs Citizenship: The form of veiling that we now see spreading all over European and North American countries comes from nowhere: it is a recent syncretic outfit, picking up from various traditions, that has been invented by fundamentalists as their political uniform, as their very visible flag. [Marieme Helie Lucas]

Thursday, 26 September 2013

I'm occasionally taken to task for being "too positive" on China. Oh well. I do know the downsides of the place; but also its upsides. As Walt Whitman might have said of China: "... very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes".
The bad news on China remains the bad news: corruption that is not simply endemic, but ubiquitous -- everyone is on the take. Pollution is horrible. There are crazy clampdowns on free speech: vide the Plan 9, I wrote about.
But the thing is that all these are pretty well covered in the media. Everyone knows that many a thing is crook in China.
Less known are the positive things that are happening. That's why occasionally I do trend a touch upside-ish about our "motherland".
And so does Chandran Nair. He writes a good piece in the South China Morning Post, "Distorted view overlooks its many positive achievements" [pdf]Summary:
1. Pollution: government aims for 20% renewable energy by 2020
2. Multicultural: 55 ethnic groups of 100 million
3. Clamp downs on corruption: attempts by Xi Jinping to tackle it (on this I'm, like, hmmmmm.... Seen this before, not much change on this one)
4. Tibet: Nair highlights the developments in the last 50 years. Which, for naysayers, is another case of "what have the Romans done for us".

Wednesday, 25 September 2013

A site I've just come across, NewsBusters.org, does an analysis of headlines in the top 10 US newspapers by circulation. They found that 90% of the reports on the Nairobi Muslim Mall Massacre did not mention "Islam" or "Muslim".
This is particularly egregious, as the Shabaab ("Youth") murderers could not have been clearer about their Islamic intentions: they called on Muslim hostages to stand up and -- after a simple Islamic test -- to leave the mall, as the only ones they wanted to murder were non-Muslims (aka "kuffar").
This makes those newspapers the real "Islamophobes": that is, they are scared of Islam; they live in fear of it: this being the proper meaning of a phobia.
They are so scared, these media folk -- of retribution from Muslims or being called "bigots" and "racists" or "Islamophobes" by non-Muslims -- that they don't mention the single most salient fact in this latest round of Muslim massacres: it was Islamically inspired.
"Islamophobes" are not those who criticise the global Jihad, criticise the pressure for a caliphate and resist Sharia law. For it is not they who are afraid of Islam. Concerned, yes; afraid to speak out, no.
It is those pusillanimous pissants in the press who live in fear of Islam.
Islamophobes all.

"Announcing that what happened in Kenya has nothing to do with Islam makes as much sense as saying that the USSR had nothing to do with Communism".

For it's a nonsense to say that the murders were done in the name of terrorism. Terrorism to what end? There has to be an aim, for all terrorism.
In the case of the Westfield massacres the killers did so on specifically religious grounds. The Guardian claims that it was all part of a power play. No doubt. But power play to what end. It turns out that even the Guardian had to admit that it was all around the issue of what form of Islam one followed. For the al-Shabaab killers, the terrorists, it's about following a more fundamental form of Islam. Not one that's more "extreme", or "nothing to do with Islam", but one that hews more closely to the literal tenets of the Trinity of Islam.

Monday, 23 September 2013

There's been quite some reporting recently of how Mooncakes, our current mid-Autumn festival's cadeaux du jour are used as more than nosh. To get around crackdowns on corruption and too-obviously lavish gift-giving, people have been giving moon cakes in their packaging just like normal moon cakes, but made of solid gold!
There's a fascinating report and nice lot of piccies 'n things at the TeaLeaf Nation blog here.
Including the fascinating fact what China spends every year on gift-giving would buy twenty Nimitz Class nuclear-powered aircraft carriers!
Maybe a little golden cake ain't so bad, if ramping up the arms race is the alternative...[h/t to my 1970's China Students Facebook group]

Richard Dawkins tweets this link, from the Trending Central blog. Disturbing stuff, about the Left's alliance with Islamism, especially as Battle Junior thinks of applying for the London School of Economics, whence the article tweeted.
I could say pretty much as Dawkins says, namely "having voted Left all my life", when I've voted in Oz (not sure I would now, but that's another matter. I'm in Hong Kong, so for the duration am not obliged to vote in Oz).
But as to Dawkins wondering "why" the Left supports Islamism, there are books on this. I have three in my Library: Unholy Alliance, by David Horowitz; United in Hate, by Jamie Glazov; and The Third Reich and the Ivory Tower, by Stephen Norwood.
The last title is interesting as it chronicles the cheerleading in the 1930s by US universities of Hitler's burgeoning Nazi party. Given the similarities of fascism with Islamism -- "Islamofascism" it has been called -- we now have the same cozying up of the Left with the fascist right. Again. When after the war all right-thinking people said it should be "never again".
I think the primary reason for "why" is that the Left is reflexively anti-American, as are Islamists. For the Left it's Amerika; for the Islamists it's The Great Satan. (*)
This visceral hatred of the free-market, individualistic, capitalist Superpower -- so much at odds with socialism's collectivist, statist leanings -- trumps the Left's concerns, such as they are, with their other "ideals": freedoms of speech and conscience, support for women's and minority rights and so on.
I guess that Dawkins' parenthetic "Islamism is not Islam" is pre-emptive protection against predictable attacks on him that not all Islam is extremist (only a "tiny minority" are!...)
However, there are plenty of powerful arguments that Islam (not just "Islamism") is at its core violent, and that its doctrinal Trinity are all texts that counsel violence.
Indeed the Turkish Prime Minister has said there is no moderate and non-moderate Islam. "Islam is Islam" says Erdogan. Quite.
Even if you accept the distinction between Islamism and Islam and assuming that by "Islamism" you mean its violent wings, it bears repeating: that there's an awful lot of violence done in its name, considering it is supposed to be "a tiny minority". This "tiny minority" is daily killing scores of people. In the last few days, nearly 100 in Kenya (specifically non-Muslims, ie, the Kufar) and in Pakistan around 80 Christians slaughtered in their Church. Just two days, in the work of the "tiny minority" of Muslims who have, we are assured "misunderstood" Islam. Awful lot of misunderstanders aren't there? (The Religionofpeace.com has been keeping a daily tally since 911. It's now up to nearly 22,000)

This damning report exposes their [the Left] agenda and methods, including the use of
accusations of racism and Islamophobia and their conflation of Muslim with
Islamist in order to defend Islamism (which they see as anti-imperialist force)
and Islam (which they view as an oppressed religion) rather than out of any
real concern for prejudice against Muslims or the rights of ‘Muslims’ who are
incidentally the first victims of Islamism. Challenging this perspective is especially
important given its wide acceptance as ‘progressive’ in mainstream society. [my emphasis]

Saturday, 21 September 2013

This makes an interesting read.
Akkari concludes: "...Today I appreciate the idea of having a society like Denmark, where people can go to a religious place, the pub, sit by the beach [or] do whatever they like. That’s pretty rare out there in the world.”Live and let live then. Like it.

Pretty simple, it seems to me. You are a "Mufti" in name only, literally. Why be bound by the arcane strictures of a medieval belief system.There's clearly a crime -- forgery -- and a moral wrong -- deception -- about to be committed here by Tahir and his mate. You have a chance to stop it. Do that.Go ahead and do what you were about to do -- the thing that your natural moral compass led you to: Say: "don't do it"..

Friday, 20 September 2013

A bit of light relief from the daily shenanigans on Syria. The Burka has raised its ugly slotted head again in the UK. One of the best comments comes from a Muslim woman, Julie, writing on the Humanitarian Intervention Centre site:

The Burka: trapped in a mobile prison

Progressive Muslim women speaking out against a culture of oppression, whilst privileged Western men defend it or hide behind dubious double standards, naively fooling themselves into thinking they protect something noble

I wore a burka only once and would not wish it on my worst enemy. I borrowed it from an Afghan friend whose mother fled from the wrath of the Taliban when she was forced to ditch her Western-style school uniform for a black prison garment which covered her from head to toe and erected a wall of withdrawal between her and the rest of society. From one day to the next, she was deemed a second class citizen by reactionary, fanatical zealots.

A burka obstructs the most basic interactions and natural senses: you cannot breathe, see, walk, sit, eat or speak normally. It is the worst expression of gender apartheid and misogyny; the ultimate cultural medium of oppression and submission; an artefact of slavery and instrument of dehumanisation, a gross violation of inalienable human rights. The rest is here.

Alan Cowell buys into the burka-ban argument with a flaccid "should-we-shouldn't-we" article in today's Herald Tribune, "Balancing religion and integration" [pdf]. He ends up with no real conclusion on the burka whereas a conclusion ought to be clear: Ban the Burka. The arguments overwhelmingly support a ban.
Moving on, Cowell believes that terrorism is somehow the fault of the west: "... young descendants of immigrants from former colonies drawn to radical Islam as they turn against societies from which they feel alienated". So, Alan: wearing a burka will help to reduce alienation?
Cowell concludes his dithery piece by noting that there are more important things than debates over the burka. Like his resounding support for Islamic victimhood, as voiced this time around by the "mainstream" Muslim Council of Britain:

The attack last May in southeast London on Lee Rigby, an off-duty British military drummer, provoked a sharp increase in anti-Muslim episodes by small far-right groups, arguably presenting far more of a challenge than the debate over the niqab. “It cannot be right,” said Farooq Murad, the secretary general of the mainstream Muslim Council of Britain, “that a minority community is allowed to be targeted in this manner.”

But let's get this right: Lee Rigby was not simply "attacked". He was brutally murdered. His head was hacked off by a Muslim who justified it to passers-by in Islamic terms.
The "sharp increase in anti-Muslim" episodes was much overplayed, surely to be understood, and in any case quickly subsided.
Cowell calls the MCB "mainstream". This is unwittingly revealing for the MCB is "mainstream", but not quite in the "moderate" and nicely tolerant way that Cowell would assume:

The MCB is connected to the hardline terrorist-supporting East London Mosque.

This is the Muslim Council of Britain, representing "mainstream" Muslims. Meantime, poll after poll in the UK has shown the majority of British Muslims -- moderate and mainstream all -- support the Islamisation of Britain, most clearly in the strong support for the implementation of Islamic Sharia in the UK.The RT reports that "Demographers say that if current trends continue, Islam could eclipse Christianity as the dominant religion in the UK, in as little as a decade". If that happens, then Islamisation and Sharia law may be implemented in the UK much sooner than expected.

Thursday, 19 September 2013

The smirking sheikh: Muslims must hate their infidel wives, in obedience to the Koran

“Often translated as "Loyalty and Enmity," the little-known Islamic doctrine of wala’ wa bara’commands Muslims never to befriend or be loyal to non-Muslims, while being clean of, disavowing and ultimately hating them.

“During a question-and-answer session at an Islamic conference, the full extent of this divisive doctrine was given full expression (see video; also posted below). Popular preacher Dr. Yassir Burhami, the vice president of the Salafi party in Egypt, explained how Loyalty and Enmity must be upheld at all times—even with a Muslim’s wife, if she happens to be a non-Muslim....”

Wednesday, 18 September 2013

John Quiggin talks of Zombie ideas: those that rise from the dead, and just won't be killed.
But what about ideas that ought not to be born, but are. That ought to be dead, but aren't? Ideas that are instead very much alive, thriving and replicating. I think I'll call them Zombie ideas anyway, for zombies are ugly creatures, and ought to be dead.
One such Zombie idea is the claim amongst Muslim and non-Muslim Islamopologists that "Muslims are the new Jews". This trope is trotted out whenever they feel a bit threatened and rather than face and counter valid criticism, resort to this rather feeble ad hominem. It's a counter that tries to shut down conversation: for we wouldn't want another "Final Solution" on our hands, would we?
We are supposed to think that valid criticism of the ideology of Islam is somehow morally equivalent to Nazi calumny, that critique (they call it "Islamophobia") is one step from a holocaust.
It's a Zombie idea that seems to be gaining currency. Though it ought not. For it is, of course, nonsense.
Christopher Hitchens, the late the great, put the idea in its place:

Reactions from even "moderate" Muslims to criticism are not uniformly reassuring. "Some of what people are saying in this mosque controversy is very similar to what German media was saying about Jews in the 1920s and 1930s," Imam Abdullah Antepli, Muslim chaplain at Duke University,toldtheNew York Times. Yes, we all recall the Jewish suicide bombers of that period, as we recall the Jewish yells for holy war, the Jewish demands for the veiling of women and the stoning of homosexuals, and the Jewish burning of newspapers that published cartoons they did not like. What is needed from the supporters of this very confident faith is more self-criticism and less self-pity and self-righteousness. [from Slate, Sept 6, 2010]

The leftist academic blog, Crooked Timber, at which Quiggin blogs, ran a post about the book on Jesus' life, "Zealot" by Reza Aslan, in which it wondered if criticisms of Aslan(*) made it "hard to escape the conclusion that Islam is the 21st century's Jewish Question". Get it? Criticise Islam and you're a 21st century Brownshirt, a step away from rounding up and gassing Muslims....
One of the commenters -- agreeing with the Zombie idea that "Muslims are the new Jews" links to a site that compares the statements of Robert Spencer and the Nazi Julius Streicher.
Now, I've read much of Spencer and seen many of his videos. His driving aim is to speak out on behalf of freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, equal rights for all genders and all minorities. He is not "anti-Muslim", but anti the jihad that seeks to spread an intolerant ideology on the west.
Streicher was a Nazi and the publisher of the odious magazine "Der Stuermer". What could be similar about these two? Well, in the mind of Colm O Broin, there are at least 10 points. And the commenters on Crooked Timber have taken this bogus equivalence at face value.
I have not. I have worked throough each of O Broin's claims and the results are here. [warning: it's a bit of a long read; one for hard-core anti-jihad geeks, perhaps]
I think it's pretty clear that O Broin, at best, is deluded, and at worst has deliberately misrepresented and lied to make a false equivalence between Spencer, a careful and concerned writer, and Streicher, an odious murderously anti-semitic Nazi.
After doing that little excercise, I came across, just yesterday, another case of "Muslims are the new Jews" in this article, by Ihsaan Gardee.
Gardee starts off with the sentence "Good Jews lie to advance Judaism. It's the law" and says that such a sentence would be taken -- rightly -- as an "anti-Semitic slur".
He then suggests that if you substitute "Muslim" for "Jews", if you said "good Muslims lie to advance Islam. It's the law", then, says Gardee, "... people aren't quite so offended". Geddit? Muslims are the new Jews. You can't say nasty things about Jews, but you can say them about Muslims, because, well, because they're the new Jews....
But the thing is this: that the statement above about the Jews is patently and provably false.
Whereas the statement with the word "Muslim" is patently and provably true. It is in Islamic Law; it's in the Sharia; it's in the Hadith. Muhammad himself recommended deception.
Ironically Gardee himself provides an example of lying in the cause of Islam . In a little-seen video, Gardee says (at 2m30s) that Muhammad on "numerous occasions" was at the receiving end of insults, but did not respond in the way that "we're seeing now" -- referring to the Muslim riots against the film "Innocence of Muslims".
But that's just not true. In the Islamic Trinity, especially in the official Muslim life of Muhammad -- the Sirah -- there are numerous examples of Muhammad taking offence at people poking fun at him and had them killed (not just rioted against...). In one case he had a satirical poet, a woman with family, murdered by one of his followers over some verses that made fun of him. So, does Gardee not know this? Given that he's head of CAIR-CAN, I doubt it.
Lies, then. Lies in the advance of Islam.

**********************

(*) The CT post was about a Fox TV interview of Aslan, in which the interviewer rather unwisely questioned the appropriateness of a Muslim, Aslan, to write about Jesus. Of course anyone ought to be free to write about anything, including Jesus. Still, the author of the post drew a rather long bow in making the claim -- on the basis of a dubious Fox interview -- that "Islam is the 21st century Jewish question" and many of the comments focussed on that point. As an aside: Robert Spencer (de quo alibi) recently published a book on Muhammad called "Did Muhammad Exist?". Unlike the furious defence of Aslan from the Left of Aslan's right to write about Jesus, the Left was critical of Spencer for writing about Muhammad, with BBC suggesting he was trying to rabble rouse. Plus ça change....

Monday, 16 September 2013

From the UK Home Office Data, released on 12th September 2013, some selected statistics for the period 2001 -- 2012 in the United Kingdom:

More than 57% of arrests for terrorism offences were Muslims. The figure is certainly more than 57% because there is an "unknown religion" category of 36%, which presumably includes some of the Islamic faith. (Table 3.2).

More than 73% of those sentenced to prison for terrorism were Muslims. Again, the figure is certainly higher as it includes an "unknown religion" category of 9%. (Table 4.1).

Need I state the obvious? The figures put the lie to the notion of a "Religion of Peace" and to the claim there is only a "tiny minority of extremists". Given that Muslims in the UK are 4.6% of the total (Pew Research), they're certainly, as Rod Liddle says, "punching way above their weight"...
[As a by-the-by, it's rather interesting, perhaps surprising even, that the figures should be official UK government ones, not the usual private company poll figures. This gives them added weight and authority.]

****************

LATER: Liddle's last para, linked above, on the issue of sexual "grooming" of underage white girls in the UK, bears quoting. Pedophilia is another area -- like the terrorism crimes I quote above -- where Muslims are over-represented ("punching above their weight"...):

.... Self-appointed Muslim community leaders have dutifully condemned the sexual abuse but insisted that it would be wrong to blame an entire community for these horrible crimes. Well, indeed it would. Blame instead something lurking deep within the ideology, the religion, of that community; its implacability, its absolutism, its antipathy to everything which is other than itself. Be ruthless in your introspection, you community leaders, so that we might be a little less so.

Sunday, 15 September 2013

The author of “The God Delusion” and “An Appetite for Wonder” doesn’t care for “Pride and Prejudice”: “I can’t get excited about who is going to marry whom, and how rich they are.”

The interview with Richard Dawkins, by the New York Times Sunday Book Reviewhere....I particularly liked the following bit, as he mentions two others of my favourite public intellectuals, Sam Harris and the late Christopher Hitchens...

SBR: You have written several books on science and secularism. What other books on the subject would you recommend?

Dawkins: Look at the list of those who obsessively attack Sam Harris and you’ll get an idea of what a dangerously effective writer he is: clear, eloquent, penetratingly intelligent, suffers no fools. Much the same could be said of Christopher Hitchens, and the attacks on him have increased now he is no longer around to fight back. Less well known, but very good in their different ways, are J. Anderson Thomson’s “Why We Believe in God(s),” a psychologically informed analysis of what J. L. Mackie called “The Miracle of Theism,” and Sean Faircloth’s “Attack of the Theocrats!,” a chillingly well-researched unmasking of the contemporary political threat to America’s noble secular tradition.

Dear Friends,
From Syria and Iran, to Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Lebanon, Turkey and Gaza, political and religious extremists are gaining the upper hand and suppressing the forces of moderation. In the wake of this mounting intolerance, there is increasingly widespread abuse of women, the slaughter of Christians and other minority groups, abhorrent human right abuses and growing global terrorism.
To raise awareness of the dangers of extremism and to promote tolerance, the Clarion Project produces award-winning documentaries and runs the leading news analysis site addressing the threat of radical Islam.
We are currently producing two feature-length documentaries on mass human rights abuses taking place across Muslim-majority societies.
We have recently upgraded our flagship website, www.clarionproject.org. In the last year alone, close to a million visitors have sought out the site which features news analysis, alternative Muslim voices, blogs and videos, and promotes progressive Muslim organizations. The site also streams content, hosts webinars, promotes activist activities and acts as a social networking tool to bring people together around this critical issue.

We recently had a family discussion on that very issue. Our son - born and brought up in Hong Kong and now studying in the UK - said that Hong Kong already has so many positives: free media, freedom of speech, clean government and judiciary, law and order with low crime rate and so on. He claims these areas are at least as good as and in some cases better (for example, lower crime rates) than in Britain. He asked in what way would any of these be improved by universal suffrage.

My answer was that it ought to be a universal right and would lessen the need for people to take to the streets over every grievance. But still, my son's point stuck in my mind: what, precisely, would be improved in today's Hong Kong by having universal suffrage? Just a "feel-good" factor and having fewer protests?

I'm no less a supporter of the need for China to stick by promises of universal suffrage for the CE by 2017, but still. It got me thinking that Mrs Ip may well be correct about universal suffrage, that "it would be foolish to pretend that it would be a cure-all for our problems".

Those problems, by the way, ought to be kept in perspective. Compared with the Middle East, our "problems" are of an order that many would love to have.

Tuesday, 10 September 2013

A positive story out of China...The last 100 inmates are to be released from labour camps in one of China's biggest cities, Guangzhou, by the end of the year, state media report. More.
(Hat tip to Paula from "Foreign Students in China 1973-79" Facebook page)

Thursday, 5 September 2013

An online video of an Australian Islamic cleric calling for Hindus and Buddhists to be killed is under investigation by South Australian police. Read the rest...

The article ends by suggesting "...the inevitable outcome is that the incitement issue is soon sidelined and the focus shifts to police fearing for Sheikh Sharif Hussein’s safety"....

Or with chants of "Islamophobia" for reporting the Sheikh's threats. After all, "Islamophobia" is a successful defence in Australia, for at least one Muslim gunman-terrorist who tried to kill two police officers....

Samuel Sandler, an aeronautical engineer and head of the Jewish community in Versailles, France, announced a few weeks ago that he’d had the local synagogue registered as a national landmark. “My feeling is that our congregation will be gone within twenty or thirty years,” he told friends, “and I don’t want the building demolished or, worse, used for improper purposes.”
Once the seat of French royalty, Versailles is now among the tranquil, prosperous, and upscale suburbs of Greater Paris. Among the townspeople are executives employed in gleaming corporate headquarters a few miles away. They and their churchgoing families inhabit early-20th-century villas and late-20th-century condominiums set in majestic greenery. Among the townspeople too, are a thousand or so Jews of similar economic and social status who have made their homes in Versailles and nearby towns. In addition to the synagogue and community center of Versailles itself, a dozen more synagogues dot the surrounding area.
So what makes Sandler so pessimistic about the future? Read on....

"...it is the duty of those who have accepted Islam to strive unceasingly to convert or subjugate those who have not. This obligation is without limit of time or space. It must continue until the whole world has either accepted the Islamic faith or submitted to the power of the Islamic state."

-- Bernard Lewis, renowned historian of Islam and the Middle East, in The Political Language of Islam, p72-3.

In other words:

"Islam is unique among religions of the world in having a developed doctrine, theology and legal system that mandates warfare against unbelievers."